Reddit acquires ML startup Spell(redditinc.com)
redditinc.com
Reddit acquires ML startup Spell
https://www.redditinc.com/blog/reddit-acquires-machine-learning-platform-spell
85 comments
Imagine how easy it would be to sell ads on reddit, the users self select topics. If I subscribed to r/koreancosmetics and r/makeup, do you really need ML to figure out which ads to show?
There's an old saying goes something like this "if you go to the car dealership, and all they have are station wagons, they're gonna sell you a station wagon". The ads you see on Reddit say much more about who is willing to advertise with them than anything about you. And so if you're seeing low-value ads, it's because they can't sell any high-value ones.
Why can't they sell ads?
As somewhat of an aside, I've used google ads before (small money) and found the experience to be awful. Very confusing interface and I am almost positive I was doing things wrong. I've also used Facebook and found it much better. It's weird because that's google's cash cow. Does everyone who spend real money just go through a personal broker or something or does everyone use that interface?
What drives ad spend?
As somewhat of an aside, I've used google ads before (small money) and found the experience to be awful. Very confusing interface and I am almost positive I was doing things wrong. I've also used Facebook and found it much better. It's weird because that's google's cash cow. Does everyone who spend real money just go through a personal broker or something or does everyone use that interface?
What drives ad spend?
> Why can't they sell ads?
I suspect the real answer is "because ads on Reddit are less than worthless" - so you get ads trying to sell you ways to poo.
I suspect Google is in a position of power so it is to their interest to make it hard to use their ad interface (or no reason to make it easier) because they don't want you to really work out exactly how useless the ads may be.
> What drives ad spend?
Momentum, likely, but I'm not in the business so I can't really talk to the values.
I suspect the real answer is "because ads on Reddit are less than worthless" - so you get ads trying to sell you ways to poo.
I suspect Google is in a position of power so it is to their interest to make it hard to use their ad interface (or no reason to make it easier) because they don't want you to really work out exactly how useless the ads may be.
> What drives ad spend?
Momentum, likely, but I'm not in the business so I can't really talk to the values.
Yes everybody goes through something like a broker. I run a small agency that manages google ads for small to medium businesses and I frequently get contacted by people who tried to do it themselves and got terrible results.
I desperately wish they would have IPO'd last may so I could short the ever living shit out of them.
Yeah, but what about scraping the entirety of a user's comment history to drive it through the algorithm to advertise to the things they aren't explicitly showing interest in?
Well, they still need to advertise makeup and cosmetics that you can buy where you live for starters.
The internet solves that problem. Anyone who can ship to the US Canada and the EU have the vast majority of reddit covered already
I have a Reddit account, but I've never subscribed to any subreddits.
Having been a long-time user of Wikia (now Fandom) as well as Reddit, it's been interesting to see Reddit go down the same path Wikia did. In my opinion, both websites started out similarly: somewhat simply designed, focused on content, and with room for communities to form themselves. Over time, both websites started pushing harder for monetization and in the process, made changes to prioritize advertising over content, and started pressuring communities to behave and interact in approved ways. It doesn't look like either website is struggling or likely to go under financially, but the charm and community of their younger iterations is definitely gone.
Reddit needs a new way to monetize.
I’d even put up with crypto bullshit if they just stopped the ads.
I thought the whole appeal of Reddit was community moderation and escape from algorithms.
It used to be, but the push for monetization has poisoned that well. I don't know what comes after reddit but I'm keeping my eyes and ears open.
Had a reddit recruiter reach out to me recently looking for engineering leadership for their upcoming product road map. What's in: ads, influencers, crypto, NFTs. What's not in: improving the core feature set of reddit like community management, curation, search, or user interface/experience.
Hard pass, and a bad sign of what's to come.
Had a reddit recruiter reach out to me recently looking for engineering leadership for their upcoming product road map. What's in: ads, influencers, crypto, NFTs. What's not in: improving the core feature set of reddit like community management, curation, search, or user interface/experience.
Hard pass, and a bad sign of what's to come.
The redesign and the complete stonewalling of it by most of the community is telling.
The moment they kill/break old.reddit.com is the moment I quit reddit for good
Unless they magically release a not horrible new UI, which I'm not holding my breath for
Unless they magically release a not horrible new UI, which I'm not holding my breath for
Likewise. It's probably the worst web UI I currently know of. Whatever team designed and implemented it should really feel bad about themselves and their work, it's unnecessarily bad, as if they were trying to make a shitty UI. I will happily stop using reddit if they kill old.reddit.com
It's not just bad it's _unusable_ on any older mobile device. Takes 10 seconds to load a page, greets you with a "Reddit is more fun in the app" popup that takes up half the page, then will display the top 3 comments but if you scroll down it will load a random different post that they think you'll like instead of showing you more comments.
They also straight up won’t let you see certain subreddits on the mobile web page, a message pops up telling you to download the app because the subreddit content is “unreviewed” or “mature”.
Not talking about NSFW stuff, either. Just regular subreddits.
Not talking about NSFW stuff, either. Just regular subreddits.
I agree. If I ever actually meet the designers or team responsible for it I would seriously question their abilities. This includes if I saw it on someone's resume or in their portfolio. Even with the current state of web UI, the new reddit UI is astoundingly bad.
They're A/B testing a slightly less bad interface on both mobile and desktop AFAICT, and they also added an algorithmic home page even for people with no account.
Do we have any data on percentage of users on old vs. new vs. mobile?
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~4% of Redditors use old reddit. As usual, we on HN are incredibly out of touch.
Granted, 60% of mod actions are from there, but that makes sense given the lack of feature parity.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/v3frc1/what_were_wo...
Granted, 60% of mod actions are from there, but that makes sense given the lack of feature parity.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/v3frc1/what_were_wo...
> As usual, we on HN are incredibly out of touch.
Yeah, I know that to be true, but those 4% of old reddit users have probably been the longest and most active reddit users from the days when reddit was more like HN.
I understand why reddit doesn't care to cater to us and instead chase new user growth (metrics & money), but in doing so they've ignored and pushed away a lot of their oldest and most loyal users. I used to donate to reddit, but I'd never do that today because of what it has become and the path it is on.
Maybe they know it and are fine with it. But they are executing terribly on that goal from a technical and usability perspective, and becoming yet another generic social media platform that is worse than the other ones. They're making themselves easier to replace eventually IMO.
Yeah, I know that to be true, but those 4% of old reddit users have probably been the longest and most active reddit users from the days when reddit was more like HN.
I understand why reddit doesn't care to cater to us and instead chase new user growth (metrics & money), but in doing so they've ignored and pushed away a lot of their oldest and most loyal users. I used to donate to reddit, but I'd never do that today because of what it has become and the path it is on.
Maybe they know it and are fine with it. But they are executing terribly on that goal from a technical and usability perspective, and becoming yet another generic social media platform that is worse than the other ones. They're making themselves easier to replace eventually IMO.
I wonder if this includes users who opted out of the redesign through settings. I use reddit.com instead of old.reddit.com, but I am on the old site due to this setting.
How many pageloads though? How many of the submissions and comments are coming from old reddit? How many of the votes? If you consider the usage/engagement curve is practically guaranteed to be a power curve, you might be surprised or actually not what that 4% translates to.
the post says 4% of users use old reddit every day. WOuldn't be surprised if they were trying to sneak in an artificially low number.
I wonder if "redditors as a whole" includes visits from external links. I never go to new reddit deliberately, but often end up there via other sources. I also use third party mobile apps more, so there will be plenty of days when I don't use old _or_ new reddit, meaning I'm not counted in that 4%.
Primarily for ads I would guess.
The problem is the community moderation is terrible, and the only viable alternative to support Reddit's recent explosive growth is algorithmic.
Reddit should prioritize their site working on the browser.
Clicking a nested thread seems to crash whatever browser I use 1/10th of the time, the videos never work, and the time it takes to open a thread is almost unbelievable in 2022.
(Never mind the times it won’t let me view content without the app.)
Clicking a nested thread seems to crash whatever browser I use 1/10th of the time, the videos never work, and the time it takes to open a thread is almost unbelievable in 2022.
(Never mind the times it won’t let me view content without the app.)
Reddit has an odd strategy. I have Apollo on my phone, which is a great Reddit app that doesn’t have ads. Sometimes, I go to Reddit in Safari out of habit. The experience is so terrible, that it forces me to go from the website, which has ads, to Apollo, which doesn’t. The performance of the mobile website is absolutely terrible as well. It’s like they’re trying to make a garbage website.
The thing that almost has me quitting reddit is that the mobile browser basically blocks you from viewing anything nsfw, which would be fine, if the definition of nsfw wasn't so broad as to cover like 1/4 of the front page. Also, even when I had the app, the links wouldn't work half the time, they'd take me to the app store instead, and then I don't think you can configure nsfw-friendly mode in the app. And I've been trying to use the app less so I use the site less so basically I'm f'ed from using reddit on my phone.
It seems like it's getting worse, now apparently it's blocking anything that is unreviewed
They are trying to make a garbage website. Most of their users use adblock, so they're trying to funnel you onto an app. They'll probably ban 3rd party apps at some point, then they can serve all their mobile users ads.
Amplosion + Open In Apollo extension "On"
Never see Reddit's website on mobile ever again
Never see Reddit's website on mobile ever again
old.reddit.com + RES is still the best Reddit experience
Yep.
"This page looks better in the app"
No reddit. It sure as shit doesn't.
"This page looks better in the app"
No reddit. It sure as shit doesn't.
Yes, that’s awful. It’s corporate gaslighting — the new page is user-hostile in nearly every way imaginable, but it helps product managers manipulate user attention to meet our quarterly KPIs, so we’ll happily lie to your face to get you to switch.
Do people at Reddit still use old.reddit.com ?
It's absurd how poorly the new reddit runs on a decent machine. Old reddit is smooth and still a fine experience, but new reddit turns my old laptop into a space heater.
They probably hate maintaining desktop. They are essentially a data farm at this point. They just want that sweet sweet device id and location data from the app.
This acquisition is...unusual. I strongly suspect it's not a 10x exit. (last raised $15M in 2019: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/spell )
Reddit obviously has the data for robust machine learning, but not sure how an experiments-management startup aligns with it unless it's an acquihire.
Reddit obviously has the data for robust machine learning, but not sure how an experiments-management startup aligns with it unless it's an acquihire.
Acquihire.
"Our next challenge is to apply what we’ve built to improve the user experience for redditors"
"we’ll no longer be signing up new commercial customers to the Spell service"
https://spell.ml/blog/spell-joins-reddit-YqtKRhEAACMAgbU9
"Our next challenge is to apply what we’ve built to improve the user experience for redditors"
"we’ll no longer be signing up new commercial customers to the Spell service"
https://spell.ml/blog/spell-joins-reddit-YqtKRhEAACMAgbU9
Do the founders get any money out of it or not much.
Depends on the deal, but if the founders are in control and the company wasn't death-spiraling, they usually do decently well (but not so well that they immediately quit their new job).
Assuming the founders are stock holders, they agreed to part with their share. Its unlikely that they were persuaded to do so without the promise of a significant payout.
Disclosure: former Reddit employee
It's definitely an acquihire. MLOps has been one of Reddit's weaker areas historically, so this acquisition makes sense to get a talented team in with a clear understanding of the space.
It's definitely an acquihire. MLOps has been one of Reddit's weaker areas historically, so this acquisition makes sense to get a talented team in with a clear understanding of the space.
This is the only explanation that makes sense. This strategy in general seems a bit short-sighted though. I suspect engineer retention is going to drop off a cliff after whatever acquisition bonuses have paid off.
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Reddit should focus on making their community less toxic, it’s hands down one of the most toxic places on the internet. These problems don’t need ML
The level of enforced groupthink there is unbearable.
literally unbearable, I think its fundamental to how the platform is designed. I have no idea why anyone would want that
How do you make it less toxic?
that's a feature
It's plainly obvious that reddit does not need ML to do what it needs to do.
Their investors are being taken on a wild ride.
Their investors are being taken on a wild ride.
Whatever they acquire, I just hope they make their search better
Video player fixes? Nope.
Search being an open joke? Not going to even look at it.
Purchase a few ML people? Oh that will surely increase our valuation.
Do something about toxic supermods? That's a feature.
Search being an open joke? Not going to even look at it.
Purchase a few ML people? Oh that will surely increase our valuation.
Do something about toxic supermods? That's a feature.
> Do something about toxic supermods
I got banned for a year from Armenia sub for criticizing an Armenian politician from the ruling party (who has been involved in a bunch of corruption scandals, including fake companies winning tenders under his grandma's name). The country subs, especially in post-USSR space, are run by ruling party representatives who tolerate zero dissent.
I got banned for a year from Armenia sub for criticizing an Armenian politician from the ruling party (who has been involved in a bunch of corruption scandals, including fake companies winning tenders under his grandma's name). The country subs, especially in post-USSR space, are run by ruling party representatives who tolerate zero dissent.
Shadowbanned (through automoderator) from all Dutch subs (same clique of moderators) for no apparent reason and mods won't even respond to my messages. Apparently I'm far from the only one this has happened to.
If Reddit doesn't do itself in it'll be the moderators ruining their own communities.
If Reddit doesn't do itself in it'll be the moderators ruining their own communities.
Banned from GreenAndPleasant for hinting that trans charities weren't more important than regular charities
They somehow managed to make the video player worse recently by removing quality selection and having only "auto" that drops down to 1 FPS 240p on a gigabit pipe with no issues anywhere else. Pretty impressive.
Reddit is a private subsidiary of a large private company, so I'm not sure why their valuation matters.
Reddit is in the process of going public. They began filing last year.
I mean, when they dropped the tagline "The front page of the internet", for the committee engineered "Dive into anything", you knew it was going down.
Reddit is a walking corpse and I'm happy to participate in the monthly "Reddit is shit" punching bag thread.
Reddit is a walking corpse and I'm happy to participate in the monthly "Reddit is shit" punching bag thread.
Right now they are floating on viral momentum. They are a few stupid decisions and one neat alternative away from going the way of Digg.
I worked at Reddit for several years in the past - if anything, they have the exact opposite of viral momentum: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1360263618508521480?lang=en
I do agree on the neat alternative piece, but all of the ones that have come up in the past had some sort of flaw (or in some cases deliberate slower growth) that caused them not to go viral (Voat, Tildes, etc)
I do agree on the neat alternative piece, but all of the ones that have come up in the past had some sort of flaw (or in some cases deliberate slower growth) that caused them not to go viral (Voat, Tildes, etc)
That may be true, but here's some context to that:
https://imgur.com/a/6le18xj
The blue line (reddit) does indeed keep going up. But it's barely noticable compared to the red (facebook).
https://imgur.com/a/6le18xj
The blue line (reddit) does indeed keep going up. But it's barely noticable compared to the red (facebook).
I'm honestly flabbergasted that with all the nearly-free money flowing around, nobody tried to build a better Reddit without making it both worse and even MORE filled with spam and nazis.
I suspect in general the entire "thing" that is Reddit is on its way out - just like how craigslist killed classified ads and itself may be slowly dying, Reddit killed forums and now is slowly dying, there may be no replacement.
I suspect in general the entire "thing" that is Reddit is on its way out - just like how craigslist killed classified ads and itself may be slowly dying, Reddit killed forums and now is slowly dying, there may be no replacement.
Reddit doesn't make crazy profits, and it's sort of hard to see a way to monetize a similar product without becoming what you're trying to replace.
Good point - the "open source/non-profit" energies seem to be focused on things like mastodon and simple forums, and competitors that aren't trying for venture capital such as Facebook would just want you to use their offering instead. I suspect for many people, "Facebook Groups" is their Reddit replacement.
Currently building https://sqwok.im after years of using Reddit but seeking a better experience for live conversation.
Def not perfect and long way to go but so far it's been fun!
Def not perfect and long way to go but so far it's been fun!
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Maybe if they can just focus on making their video servers work sometime in the next decade.
For everyone nodding in agreement with this post I have a treat for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99cVnYY9Iqs
Well that explains part of it.
It does look like they plan to do something about it finally: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/v3frc1/what_were_wo...
> Performant
> One consistent message from redditors has been that performance on the site and native apps could be better. We agree. That’s why the Reddit engineering team is working on making the Reddit platform faster and more reliable.
> A quick heads-up–this section is for engineers and robots. If you like a bit of nerdy tech talk, read on. If you don’t want to get lost in the technical details of what it takes to keep a site likeReddit running, you may want to skip ahead to the ‘Excellent’ section.
> Improving platform stability
> Last year, a major priority was improving feed load times (also known as Cold Start Latency) so that redditors could tap into their feeds and scroll through posts quickly, without waiting or watching little blue spinners tell them the page is loading. Because of those efforts, we saw drops in wait times across the board—iOS went down -11%, Android -19%, and the backend was down -25%. We also made improvements that reduced crashes and errors, resulting in a 64% reduction in downtime and a 97% reduction in background error rate.We’ll continue to invest in these sorts of latency and stability improvements, while also investing in a design system to componentize Reddit’s user interface (UI).
> Making Reddit faster, faster, faster!
> Another big factor in a webpage’s performance is how much stuff it loads. The number of requests for assets, the size of those assets, and how those assets are used are all good indicators of what sort of performance the site will generally have. Reddit’s current web platforms make a lot of requests and the payload sizes are high. This can make the site unwieldy and slow for redditors (especially in places that may already have slower internet service).
> We’ve already begun work on unifying our web (what some of you call new Reddit) and mobile web clients to make them faster, clean up UX debt, and upgrade the underlying tech to a modern technology stack. (For those interested in such things, that stack is Lit element, Web Components, and Baseplate.js. And the core technology choice is server-side rendering using native web components, which allow for faster page loads.) Stay tuned, because we’ll be sharing more on these efforts later in the year, and there’s some exciting stuff on the way.
It does look like they plan to do something about it finally: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/v3frc1/what_were_wo...
> Performant
> One consistent message from redditors has been that performance on the site and native apps could be better. We agree. That’s why the Reddit engineering team is working on making the Reddit platform faster and more reliable.
> A quick heads-up–this section is for engineers and robots. If you like a bit of nerdy tech talk, read on. If you don’t want to get lost in the technical details of what it takes to keep a site likeReddit running, you may want to skip ahead to the ‘Excellent’ section.
> Improving platform stability
> Last year, a major priority was improving feed load times (also known as Cold Start Latency) so that redditors could tap into their feeds and scroll through posts quickly, without waiting or watching little blue spinners tell them the page is loading. Because of those efforts, we saw drops in wait times across the board—iOS went down -11%, Android -19%, and the backend was down -25%. We also made improvements that reduced crashes and errors, resulting in a 64% reduction in downtime and a 97% reduction in background error rate.We’ll continue to invest in these sorts of latency and stability improvements, while also investing in a design system to componentize Reddit’s user interface (UI).
> Making Reddit faster, faster, faster!
> Another big factor in a webpage’s performance is how much stuff it loads. The number of requests for assets, the size of those assets, and how those assets are used are all good indicators of what sort of performance the site will generally have. Reddit’s current web platforms make a lot of requests and the payload sizes are high. This can make the site unwieldy and slow for redditors (especially in places that may already have slower internet service).
> We’ve already begun work on unifying our web (what some of you call new Reddit) and mobile web clients to make them faster, clean up UX debt, and upgrade the underlying tech to a modern technology stack. (For those interested in such things, that stack is Lit element, Web Components, and Baseplate.js. And the core technology choice is server-side rendering using native web components, which allow for faster page loads.) Stay tuned, because we’ll be sharing more on these efforts later in the year, and there’s some exciting stuff on the way.
This is actually obscene wow. My bits and bytes are crying in pain and suddenly I'm against net neutrality for Reddit.
That music and linus hopping in is so great..
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It must feel very good to sell your startup right now, congrats to the team.